The BIG FAT THEORY of BIG FAT FANTASY

[Erfael]

I don't think that the dilemma is unique to this generation of youth. Throughout written history, the struggle to determine personal self worth and meaning is rampant. Sure, today's world is different and the perspectives are different, but looking back on ages past, when was there a time that change was not dramatic?
Who has ever really figured out 'how they fit into the world'? We find our places and we either grow comfortable in them or remain restless, but when has man ever found the answers? Even the question has not really changed over time. The world today may be more complicated, but I don't feel that the personal quests have changed all that much.

No, the quests are the same, but the guideposts have rotted away through commercial and enlightened corrosion, that or the language they're written in is no longer one people can recognize and use to aid them in their journey.

 

[Davis Ashura]

I think this has everything to do with it. Not just this, though, but also the demythification of our world. There is no longer any ritual to help these kids figure out HOW to fit into a world this big, not just what their place will be. And it doesn't just apply to kids. There are plenty of 20 and 30 and 40 year olds now who are in the same situation, have never figured out how they fit into the world. And with the mega-commercialization that's going on, they don't have to figure it out to keep living, but to live healthily (physically as well as mentally) they have to. However the corporations aren't interested in them living healthily, just as good consumers. I think the last generation that really had a good sense of their place in the world was Brokaw's Greatest Generation. They really understood their place in the world after being put through WWII.

Has there ever been a time like this when people had so much leisure time that they needed to determine their place in the world? If I'm not mistaken, throughout most of human history, most people lived an agrarian life, toiling as peasants (if they were lucky), serfs, or slaves. They worked from sun-up to sundown, and they knew their place in the world - it was tied to the earth beneath their feet. But, the chance to escape such an existence, to become educated or learn to read didn't exist for most people until fairly recently. So, I think we're better off for having so much time to dwell on finding our place in the world since so many that came before were born into a status that they readily knew, but could do nothing to change.

 

[Erfael]

Has there ever been a time like this when people had so much leisure time that they needed to determine their place in the world? If I'm not mistaken, throughout most of human history, most people lived an agrarian life, toiling as peasants (if they were lucky), serfs, or slaves. They worked from sun-up to sundown, and they knew their place in the world - it was tied to the earth beneath their feet. But, the chance to escape such an existence, to become educated or learn to read didn't exist for most people until fairly recently. So, I think we're better off for having so much time to dwell on finding our place in the world since so many that came before were born into a status that they readily knew, but could do nothing to change.

I agree, but there are pros and cons to both sides of the coin. It's nice to be socially mobile and be able to escape such situations, but those situations really allowed people to live as well as they could, as they knew what was coming tomorrow. So often people don't know now what tomorrow will bring. Now there are layoffs and bankruptcies and various other bumps in the road there there is no mythology to help people understand and assimilate well into their lives. An agrarian society still had ritual to help them along with winter and harvest and drought and so on. The world had far more meaning, rather than just a place for the individual ego to take abuse.

 

[Gary Wassner]

Have you guys forgotten the Greeks? Ancient Greece may have been an agrarian society, but that didn't stop them from thinking and writing!!

I don't see the struggle as being any different today than ever before. Maybe more people do have the leisure time and the energy left at the end of a day to worry about these issues than they did ages ago, but look at the history of philosophy. The same questions are posed over an over, though the vocabulary may have changed.

I think you are romanticising the past, Erfael. Society was plagued by war and disease and political turmoil. One out of two infants died in childbirth or didnt' survive their first year. Famine was common. We don't have the same issues today to confront regularly, so we have others - terrorism, bankruptcy, making ends meet. They had their Gods and we have ours to help us through the hard times. They worshiped at nature's altar and we worship at the altar of the media and the computer console.

 

[Leiali]

Gemquest, I think both you and Erfael have also forgotten that you are talking about western civilisation, which amounts to a minority of the world population. The majority of people in developing countries do not have the luxuries we take for granted, like a childhood for example. I agree however, that philosophical, spiritual and religious questions are asked whatever the standard of living wherever in the world.

 

[Gary Wassner]

Yes, I was speaking primarily about western civilization initially. But, if you think about it, eastern societies were very philosophically sophisticated. India and China developed contemplative cultures, though their 'weltanshaung' was totally different. Even cultures that remained agrarian until they were practically destroyed - the many American Indian tribes and the native Hawaiians for example - has sophisticated belief systems that were based upon clear and concise metaphysical concepts.
I don't think that the question of meaning or the search for spiritual peace and comfort is at all restricted to affluent people. They may have more time to study and write about it, but everyone, no matter how exhausted physically or mentally, has to go to sleep with themself at night. When you pray to whatever gods you believe in before you close your eyes, you are dealing with the issue of meaning.

 

[Scott Bakker]

I don't see the struggle as being any different today than ever before.

If you're still referring to the issue of adolescent self-identification I think you're overstating your case, Gemquest. Certainly the differences are as profound as the similarities. Think of the mere freedom to self-identify. All the media. All the marketing.

For instance, you could argue that material and social aspiration simply did not exist for the overwhelming majority in pre-capitalist Europe - they had to settle for spiritual aspiration instead. Surely this is a profound change: people believing they can change their lot in this world as opposed to the next.

And in a sense, the more different our social organization, the more different our belief-sets have to be, since our beliefs underwrite our actions, and the repetition of our systematically interconnected actions is what keeps our society ticking. Every age has its ideology. I'd say contemporary, post-industrial society is quite different from agrarian, pre-Enlightenment Europe.

 

[Larry]

If you're still referring to the issue of adolescent self-identification I think you're overstating your case, Gemquest. Certainly the differences are as profound as the similarities. Think of the mere freedom to self-identify. All the media. All the marketing.

For instance, you could argue that material and social aspiration simply did not exist for the overwhelming majority in pre-capitalist Europe - they had to settle for spiritual aspiration instead. Surely this is a profound change: people believing they can change their lot in this world as opposed to the next.

And in a sense, the more different our social organization, the more different our belief-sets have to be, since our beliefs underwrite our actions, and the repetition of our systematically interconnected actions is what keeps our society ticking. Every age has its ideology. I'd say contemporary, post-industrial society is quite different from agrarian, pre-Enlightenment Europe.

Time, it's all a matter of time management. As I type this, it is 9:15 AM CDT. What would this matter to someone even three hundred years ago, when things were scheduled around diurnal rhythms? Don't think too many would have been keen on my 11PM-7AM workday/night, not to mention the great likelihood that my line of work would have been viewed as superfluous. E.P. Thompson wrote a very important bit on the subjugation of Time to Work in his last major work before his death, Customs in Common. I think his statements on that issue would support your comments quite well, No-Dog.

And speaking of time, it's about time I go to sleep, yes?

 

[Gary Wassner]

Yes, I tend to overstate my case, and to make sweeping generalizations too often. But sometimes you make a simple statement much more complicated than it was meant to be, No Dog. I suppose it's just a function of our different perspectives and disciplines. I am not criticizing you, just observing.

My point was not that we think exactly alike. Nor was it that in all cases, in all societies, nothing differs or has changed over time. I was just commenting that certain concerns are not in direct correlation with environmental or societal issues, but more in tune to human, animal, spiritual needs. If that is too vague for you, then I apologize. But many of the questions we have been trying to address in the past weeks have been about concerns of the spirit. You may not find that category scientific enough, but it prevails in literature over time, and it rears its amorphous and veiled head constantly. I have 'spiritual' needs. I think most of us do, and when I speak with colleagues in China or Malaysia or Brazil, or California for that matter, we share the desire to fulfill them. Years ago when I was in graduate school, many of us shared those same concerns, and when I was a child, my grandfather and I used to sit and talk about his dreams and hopes and worries.
The 1920's was an era of discovery, as was the 60's, and probably countless centuries as far back as we could examine, suffer the concerns and needs of the spirit.

So, yes, there is no doubt that things are different now than 500 years ago. But things are different today than they were 5 years ago! You could never examine anything if all you looked for were the reasons why comparisons cannot be made. I am looking at a prevailing theme, and trying to understand what it is the result of - I believe it is the result of being human.

 

[Scott Bakker]

But sometimes you make a simple statement much more complicated than it was meant to be, No Dog.

Because every statement is more complicated than it was 'meant' to be! We only have one meagre perspective on any one thing at any one time. We may be hardwired to assume that our perspective is the one, to prefer simplicity and certainty over complexity and doubt, but the fact is we don't even know what we mean half the time. I certainly don't!

I was just commenting that certain concerns are not in direct correlation with environmental or societal issues, but more in tune to human, animal, spiritual needs.

This has been my argument as well, and the reason why I see epic fantasy as a reaction to the scientific disenchantment of the world. We're hardwired to anthropomorphize, to make social sense of the world (which is why in the absence of the scientific worldview, we attribute meaning, purpose, and agency to natural events - we devise 'Middle-earths' and call them real). Since we as of yet have no naturalistic picture of meaning, purpose, and agency, they remain 'supernatural.'

If that is too vague for you, then I apologize. But many of the questions we have been trying to address in the past weeks have been about concerns of the spirit. You may not find that category scientific enough, but it prevails in literature over time, and it rears its amorphous and veiled head constantly.

I must have misstated my point somewhere along the line, because I quite agree, and yet you seem to assume that I won't.

Imagine you have two friends, one who always seems to tell you what you want to hear - flattering stories that makes things simple and certain - and one who just describes things without any real regard for what you want to hear. Now for the longest time, it makes no practical difference just who you listen to, so you tend to favour the former because you happen to like what he has to say. Then suddenly, the disinterested friend starts telling you things that make a real practical difference, despite the fact you don't particularly like what he has to say. In one breath he says, 'humans are not made in God's image,' and in the next breath he tells you how to track and avoid cholera epidemics. And as time passes, he starts talking more and more and more, and the things he makes possible become more and more remarkable: supercomputers, thermonuclear devices, and so on. As this happens, you start looking at your other, more flattering friend askance. You still like what he has to say - even more, you realize he's saying things you need to hear to make sense of your life, especially in the heartless world you suddenly find yourself in. But nothing he says seems to make any practical difference, the debates go round and round, and wherever his stories conflict with those of your disinterested friend, they seem to collapse.

You find that it's impossible to look at his stories in the same way.

You can imagine all sorts of possible reactions: 1) You could deny your disinterested friend and cleave to the old stories, insist on their literal truth, and use zealotry and displays of conviction to compensate for your lack of justifications. 2) You could try to hybridize, try to give the old flattering stories the superficial form of the disinterested descriptions given by your more troubling yet more practical friend - try to have it both ways, in effect. 3) You could shrug your shoulders, and do away with the contradictions between your friends by taking the old stories to be metaphors for 'greater truths' that 'ultimately exceed our capacity to know.' 4) You can deny your flattering friend outright, and embrace a world that seems antithetical to some rather fundamental needs.

No doubt, there's innumerable other possible reactions, but I think this gives a good outline of the quandary I see us embroiled in. I see myself as belonging to (3), personally, though in a manner that makes it easy to confuse with (4) - which is probably why I find myself continually at odds with 3's (such as yourself) and 4's (such as Grantaire and Dawnstorm)! I just have no way of knowing or saying what those 'greater truths' might be. For me, they must remain an empty posit.

I'm all for the supernatural - I'm just can't find any way to decisively arbitrate between any of the claims - Christian, contextualist, Hindu, rationalist, Buddhist, post-structuralist, New Age - that purport to give factual content to that word.

Institutionalized science gives us the most reliable, comprehensive, practicable theoretical truth-claims in the history of our species. I think this almost a platitude, as is the assertion that institutionalized science has profoundly transformed the way we think and live. I sincerely wish this weren't the case, which is probably why it took my old poker pals two full years to batter down my rationalizations! To think I once thought I was one exception, the one egghead in the history of the human race to lay is his conceptual fingers on real philosophical knowledge on a par with that of science, and that my inability to engender consensus didn't lay in the weakness of my claims, but in the stupidity of everyone else on the planet earth!

But then we're hardwired to think ourselves the magical exception - something I intend to prove with my next trip to Vegas!

 

[Gary Wassner]

You know, it seems we do agree more than I realize. But for some reason I get this consistent, nagging feeling that you are so programmed to define and clarify everyting so precisely that you are thoroughly dissatisfied with accepting the inablitlity to do that all the time. Therefor, I feel as if we are taking different positions even though we may not be. You want too much, No Dog. At least, you seem to want what you will probably never have - final answers that appeal to your theoretical and well ordered mind.
As I have grown older, I have allowed my mind to accept a less ordered world and to find comfort in feelings that assuage my fears and doubts - feelings that I don't try all the time to interpret or analyze, but just accept for what they are. Music elicits them, poetry elicits them and writing elicits them. After all, we are not solely cogitating animals. And, luckily for me, I am no longer functioning in an academic environment where I need to be reminded constantly that feelings are inferior to thoughts.

No Dog - I just wanted to add that I really and truly think you are superbly intelligent and I thoroughly enjoy the interaction all the time! I hope you never interpret the tone of my responses as anything other than good natured and spirited.

 

[Scott Bakker]

You know, it seems we do agree more than I realize. But for some reason I get this consistent, nagging feeling that you are so programmed to define and clarify everyting so precisely that you are thoroughly dissatisfied with accepting the inablitlity to do that all the time.

I'm recovering post-structuralist, remember. After years spinning my wheels and having one-sided debates, I finally realized that the disruptions, dispersions, and discursive breakdowns one finds in communication weren't really all that remarkable. The thing about reason is that in those rare occassions where people aren't arguing at cross-purposes, it really seems to work.

The zealotry of the converted...

As I have grown older, I have allowed my mind to accept a less ordered world and to find comfort in feelings that assuage my fears and doubts - feelings that I don't try all the time to interpret or analyze, but just accept for what they are.

Apart from accepting a less ordered world, I actuallly seem to be going the other way as I age! I seem to become more and more suspicious of comforting sentiment and argument with every year - particularly since I want my children to inherit a paradisial world and not an apocalyptic one! I'm not suggesting you in particular are doing this, Gemquest, but it seems apparent to me that the vast majority of people put reason at the disposal of self-interest, rather than the other way around - and why not when there's no longer any institution capable of resolving questions of value?

If this is the case, if seeking consolation and vindication is our weakness as humans, then shouldn't we (within reason of course) continually analyze and interrogate, shouldn't we continually say, think, and feel unsettling things? This is one reason why I prefer writing fiction to philosophy: the latter, when it troubles, is too easily dismissed!

No Dog - I just wanted to add that I really and truly think you are superbly intelligent and I thoroughly enjoy the interaction all the time! I hope you never interpret the tone of my responses as anything other than good natured and spirited.

The feelings are entirely reciprocated, Gemquest! I hope you forgive my bad manners from time to time. I'd like to say I've been trained to 'cut to the chase,' when in actual fact I've been institutionalized to 'go for the juggler.'

 

[Larry]

You can imagine all sorts of possible reactions: 1) You could deny your disinterested friend and cleave to the old stories, insist on their literal truth, and use zealotry and displays of conviction to compensate for your lack of justifications. 2) You could try to hybridize, try to give the old flattering stories the superficial form of the disinterested descriptions given by your more troubling yet more practical friend - try to have it both ways, in effect. 3) You could shrug your shoulders, and do away with the contradictions between your friends by taking the old stories to be metaphors for 'greater truths' that 'ultimately exceed our capacity to know.' 4) You can deny your flattering friend outright, and embrace a world that seems antithetical to some rather fundamental needs.

No doubt, there's innumerable other possible reactions, but I think this gives a good outline of the quandary I see us embroiled in. I see myself as belonging to (3), personally, though in a manner that makes it easy to confuse with (4) - which is probably why I find myself continually at odds with 3's (such as yourself) and 4's (such as Grantaire and Dawnstorm)! I just have no way of knowing or saying what those 'greater truths' might be. For me, they must remain an empty posit.

I'm all for the supernatural - I'm just can't find any way to decisively arbitrate between any of the claims - Christian, contextualist, Hindu, rationalist, Buddhist, post-structuralist, New Age - that purport to give factual content to that word.

This schema definitely has given me a lot to think about this afternoon as I've read and re-read this. On such a division, I'd almost have to be categorized as a 3), but even that doesn't seem to fit well with my world-view, which tends to be someone trying to navigate his way through the nominalist/anti-nominalist landmines. I just don't know how much I can believe in innateness, nor am I really sure if I can accept a Behaviorist stance on matters. All I understand is that the world seems very uncertain to me and I'm left to put pieces I find into some recognizable pattern. Come to think of it, don't we humans tend to not just categorize ideas and objects, but also that we place them in patterns that may or may not be meaningful to us?

I think I'll be thinking some more on this for a while now.

 

[Grantaire]

Ah, I'm glad I looked back at this thread, you've certainly given me a lot of food for thought, No-Dog!

Apart from accepting a less ordered world, I actuallly seem to be going the other way as I age! I seem to become more and more suspicious of comforting sentiment and argument with every year - particularly since I want my children to inherit a paradisial world and not an apocalyptic one! I'm not suggesting you in particular are doing this, Gemquest, but it seems apparent to me that the vast majority of people put reason at the disposal of self-interest, rather than the other way around - and why not when there's no longer any institution capable of resolving questions of value?

If this is the case, if seeking consolation and vindication is our weakness as humans, then shouldn't we (within reason of course) continually analyze and interrogate, shouldn't we continually say, think, and feel unsettling things? This is one reason why I prefer writing fiction to philosophy: the latter, when it troubles, is too easily dismissed!

In the scenario you give, you categorize me as a 4. I'd like to comment about that, because you make it seem a rather cold and uncaring worldview. The way I view things is that nothing has innate value. My life, your life, the earth, etc. Nothing has inherent value that we can objectively ascertain (thus all the conflict between science and religion). But does that make people with that worldview cold and harsh in realizing and accepting that? I simply say that things don't automatically have value- not that they don't have value. I don't have an exact metaphor or example to explain this, so I'll improvise.

There is NOTHING. No universe, no existance, nothing. Except for a blob of water. Can that blob of water have a value? Now then, take that blob of water, and place it in our universe and existance, on earth. Cannot it then have value? There it can do many tasks for us, and indeed, it is vital to our lives. And such is our existance- taken against no backdrop, each of us means nothing. But given a context, we can assign value. I'm not sure how well I just explained my thoughts there..but I'm trying to say that in a society, we assign values because things either aid or impede our existance. But if there was nothing existing except the object under consideration, it would have no innate value.

 

[Gary Wassner]

You explained that quite well, actually. I have never believed that objects have innate value. We ascribe value to things. In nature, value can be defined in many different ways - utilitarian is the first one that comes to mind. We need air and water and food. We seek safety and a modicum of comfort. So those things that supply those needs have inherent value within that context.

But what about spiritual needs? How do you evaluate those, and the things that would satisfy them? Are there really such things as 'spiritual needs' to being with, or do you believe that they are just the products of physiological machinations that we, as humans, are not consciously aware of?

No Dog - I am totally schizo when it comes to what I find logically appealing and what I find acceptable socially. I am a fan of Nietzsche, yet I am compassionate and socially minded. How more schizophrenic can a person get? I too am a parent, and the instincts of being one generate an entirely unique matrix of requirements that I try to impose upon this unforgiving world.

As I said many times before, our minds and our emotions, thought and feeling, don't always lead us to the same place. In fact, they take us on different paths more often than not it seems. But that is a natural product of our having both a physical self and a mental self. Why should we ever expect perfect harmony?

 

[Scott Bakker]

But given a context, we can assign value.

So how about Auschwitz? Is that simply 'good' or 'bad' depending on the context? Good for Nazis, bad for Jews and homosexuals, with nary a reason to arbitrate between them? (Imagine the conservation: "Auschwitz bad? Well it all depends on one's point of view, now, doesn't it?") Or if value is something 'we assign,' why shouldn't we simply value things like life and liberty only when they serve our self-interests (as is the case with American foreign policy)? I mean, on your account, there's nothing inherently wrong with boiling children in vegetable oil; we just happen to generally take such things as wrong - I suppose because we've been arbitrarily socialized to do so. Once you realize this arbitrariness, what's to stop you, aside from the threat of force, from taking things any old way? And if arbitrary force is the deciding factor, doesn't this mean it all comes down to power, and that what we're really doing when we assign value is what we're told - which is to say that value is simply an societal control mechanism (as Ted Bundy persuasively argues)?

Sounds pretty cold to me, Grantaire! It's one reason why I abandoned contextualism some time ago: it just seems to collapse into nihilism.

 

[Gary Wassner]

Interesting, No Dog, that you used the word 'cold' to describe your sense of this perspective. The reason I say that is you evalutated the situation in an emotional way as opposed to strictly a logical, more scientific way. The emotions, the gut reactions that stem from our innate sense of right and wrong, mitigate the logical approach. As I said before, we are very much alike in these matters.
If the Germans had won the war, would they have been right? Would history have seen them as the great creators who changed the direction of the world? We here in the US can't understand the hatred much of the Muslim world has for us. We think of ourselves as kind and generous and very liberal. After all, you just need to walk the streets of Manhattan and you can see that the entire world is represented right here. So why do they despise us? From their perspective we are the infidel and the agressor.

Is there a right and a wrong?

 

[Scott Bakker]

The reason I say that is you evalutated the situation in an emotional way as opposed to strictly a logical, more scientific way.

I'm no enemy of sentiment. I'm just dismayed that sentiment is no friend of cognition.

If I had taken the logical, scientific route, I would have ended up in the lap of nihilism - or (4). This is the dilemma I keep prattling on about, the 'crisis of meaning' that many credit Nietzsche with seeing first. Modern rationalty, when adopted without prejudice, eventually renders value, purpose, and meaning 'supernatural' in the pejorative sense.

To avoid this consequence, it seems you have to embrace irrationalism of some stripe, but oi vey, what a scary road that is!

 

[Gary Wassner]

I can tell you're not a student of the German language! (or it's most 'salacious' derivitives) Oy Veh! is right.

But is it really irrationalism to be rational about annihilation and the wickedness of it? Perhaps the real irrationality was in the attempt to be objective about taking another's life. If our most precious gift is life itself, is it rational to take it away from someone for any purpose except to directly preserve it?

 

[Erfael]

Here's a quote I found that speaks to some of what many of us are saying in lots of different ways about religion, symbolism, myth, and meaning:

If we deny our children their historical, cultural heriatge, their birthrighht to these stories, what then? Instead of creating men and women who have a grasp of literary allusion and symbolic language, and a metaphorical tool for dealing with the serious problems of life, we will be creating stunted boys and girls who speak only a barren language, a language that accurately reflects their equally barren mind.

It's in response to the de-mythification of the world, the spiritual wasteland that Eliot refers to. The presence of some of that is why I read fantasy, as it is the closest thing to myth being generated today in any medium. But this is also why I believe that fantasy should say something, have this underlying symbolic language and meaning. In the absence of that, I don't care to read fantasy any more than anything else that lacks these aspects.